Embodiments of the invention are in the field of optomechanical nanophotonics, more particularly to broadly tunable, optomechanical, nanophotonic apparatus, methods, and applications and, most particularly to a broadband nanophotonic switch.
The control of light using optical microcavities has important applications ranging from quantum aspects of light-matter interaction to information routing in advanced photonic net-works. The key characteristic of these cavities is their resonant response, which occurs only when the wavelength of light is an integer fraction of the cavity's optical path length. Therefore in order to reconfigure these devices, a method to tune the optical path length is necessary. Electro-optic tuning has been demonstrated using LiNBO3, however only sub-nanometer (nm) tuning was achieved; thermo-optic or free-carrier injection based tuning has also been demonstrated with tens of nm tuning range. These methods however not only are limited to materials with high thermo-optic coefficients or strong free-carrier dispersion, but also require high temperatures (>400° K) or suffer from free-carrier induced losses.
Another way to control the cavity length is to manipulate their mechanical degrees of freedom. Such manipulation can be achieved using the optical forces provided by photons circulating inside the optical microcavities. For example, it has been shown that optical gradient forces can be used to actuate the mechanical motion in these cavities with tuning ranges on the order of 2 nm, and also proposed as a tuning method for various waveguide and microcavity parameters.
In view of the foregoing mentioned shortcomings and problems in the current state of the art, the inventors have recognized the advantages and benefits that would be provided by a solution to these problems and other known shortcomings in the art, particularly by apparatus, methods, and applications that enable a large tuning bandwidth (e.g., over the entire C and/or L telecommunications bands) and, which, are conveniently manufacturable by standard CMOS processes.